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Listen to the Guardian's endorsement interviews

Assembly candidate and Supervisor David Campos speaks with the Guardian in our endorsement interview.

Photo by Mike Koozmin

Our endorsements for the June election hit the streets in this week's Bay Guardian, in newsstands now. But although we do explain the reasoning behind our endorsement decisions on the printed page, in interest of transparency we're letting readers hear directly from the people behind the two hottest races: the Assembly race between David Campos and David Chiu, and the waterfront height measure Prop. B.

Below we've embedded four audio recordings from our endorsement interviews. The first two are from Campos and Chiu, and both raise interesting points when defending their records. Towards the end of Chiu's recording, for instance, we ask him about taking (and giving back) campaign funds from Steven MacDonald, an attorney who has represented landlords evicting tenants (and evicted tenants as well). Chiu fires back with critiques of campaign funding snafus in Campos' race, as well as allegations that Campos supported aspects of the controversial "Twitter Tax Break."

In our endorsement interview with Campos, he defends his record and his votes for tax relief to Twitter and other mid-Market tenants. He also addresses allegations from Chiu that his progressive platform may not gain traction in statewide politics. Both candidates highlight what legislation they'd support or create to help San Francisco on the statewide level, covering topics as diverse as eduation, rideshare regulation, Ellis Act reform, and more.

Each of the interviews tracks at about an hour, and they're well worth a listen. After the Assembly interviews, we also have our Yes on Proposition B and No on Proposition B interviews. In the Yes on B interview, former Mayor Art Agnos delivers fiery condemnations of the politicking of wealthy interests moving to make a buck on the waterfront, laced with a four-letter word or two after we told him Internet broadcasts aren't censored like airwave radio broadcasts.

"I've never done that in an editorial meeting of any kind," Agnos says on the recording, excitedly. "We're getting all Howard Stern, here!"

A technical note on the No on B interview. We had technical difficulties with the file during recording, and unfortunately captured only the first 10 minutes of the interview. We felt it was worth it to supply our readers with the arguments for No on B, and will present the portion that we were able to record.